Well, it's MY favorite.
Part One: Pre-Courtship
This picture above is the first picture ever of Devin and I together. And yes, that is Ali between us, which is hilarious. I give Ali all the credit of bringing Devin and I together. After the Lord, that is.
So - here is our story! Devin and I both started our first semester of college at BYU-Idaho, fall of 2002. Within the first week or so, we had both learned the tricks of the dating trade at BYU-I; one night, he and his roommates were out walking through the girls' apartment complexes, and my roommates and I were sitting in our apartment - with the door wide open to invite any such male wanderers to stop and talk to us. Here is a picture of us later at that same historic location:
Ah, Carriage House 311 - if we had only known then! But, I'm getting ahead of myself.
Devin and cohorts stopped at our door and began the typical get-to-know-you chatting. Devin fell madly in love! But not with me - with Ali. (He said it's because she was the only one whose name he could remember. I highly doubt that!) Devin began pursuing Ali and I WAS MAD!! Not because I was jealous (because neither of us had any romantic interest in each other), but because I was a fiercely loyal cousin, and I was looking out for my own best interests. Ali was "waiting for" my cousin, Andrew, who was serving an LDS mission in Germany - and I was determined that my best friend WOULD become part of my family! So, I disapproved whenever Devin came around looking for her, but at the same time, never had anything against him personally. When we would all hang out, we had great fun together - in fact, everyone used to tease us that "Devin is the male form of Karina, and Karina is the female form of Devin". We even went smashing pumpkins once (more like squishing them, since we dropped them from the 3rd floor and they were very old, mostly frozen-rock-solid-from-the-Rexburg-winter-which-yes-starts-in-October pumpkins and they just collapsed).
Devin always refers to this as "Our First Date" - but I vehemently disagree, as it does NOT fit the "planned ahead, paired off, and paid for" criteria I believe in.
Well, Devin and Ali broke up, Devin went off to Spain to serve a mission, Andrew came home and promptly married Ali (hooray!), and we all stayed good friends. I ended up going to Brazil to serve a mission, and Devin found out about this via Ali (her match-making begins). He wrote me, I wrote back, he wrote again, I wrote back again, he wrote again - - I SWEAR I replied to it!
Brazilian mail is sometimes untrustworthy... In any case, Devin did not get a return letter and thus quit all communication between the two of us for the remainder of my mission.
I returned home in October 2006 and started back at BYU-Idaho the following January. Having been gone for so long, I was sad to find that almost ALL of my BYU-I friends were elsewhere. I found out somehow (now that I think of it, probably from Ali!) that Devin was back at BYU-Idaho too, and was really pretty excited because that brought my friend count up to 2. I'm not sure where I got Devin's number (again, probably from Ali), but I called Devin and we had a nice chat catching up with each other until I had the gall to suggest we should get together sometime...a fatal mistake which brought about an awkwardly abrupt end to our conversation as he misinterpreted my PURELY FRIEND-BASED INVITATION to be a bold romantic advance and spluttered something about how he couldn't because he was dating someone already. I was miffed because #1- he was so cocky to presume I was interested in him, #2- he totally rejected me in my obvious need for social-ness without even an offer to double date sometime, #3- I was back down to 1 friend at BYU-Idaho.
I think I subconsciously held a grudge about this for quite awhile, as I never went to visit Devin. He, however, (probably feeling guilty! - just kidding) came to visit me at my apartment several times over the next year and a half we were both there, and we also frequently ran into each other on BYU-I's small campus. I did go support him in a couple performances - he was part of a barbershop quartet, "3 Good Haircuts", which was the best at BYU-I by far. They were asked to sing at the Rexburg Temple Celebration, a great honor. I have put the video here, in case you're interested - he's the one on the right.
Anyway, I always enjoyed seeing Devin, however brief it was, but never thought to do more than let fate bring us together every so often - he was just my good ol' chum from the old days of freshman year. We both were busy with school and our active college dating careers - but we certainly benefited from the 6 years of growth and learning between first becoming friends and our (ahem! REAL) first date.
Well, in April 2008, I graduated and moved home to Holladay, and Devin transferred to BYU and moved to American Fork with his mission buddy, Skylar. At some point during that summer, I remember talking to Ali on the phone and protesting her encouragement to "call Devin and see how he's doing"...but Devin beat me to the punch (I think it was in October) and called me to catch up on life. We discovered that we had both moved away from BYU-I, but were still relatively close (45 minute drive). We both discussed the people we were dating at the time, and Devin suggested we do a double date (ha! 2 years later! :D). The date fell through, but I had told Devin about my involvement in the LDS Church's Christmas musical in the Conference Center Theater (called Savior of the World) and invited him to come. I played the role of one of Mary's cousins, as well as an angel in the chorus. Here I am on stage with my "sister"/fellow Mary's cousin.
A few weeks later, he decided to bring a date to see me in Savior of the World, but didn't tell me that he was coming. It was opening week, just the day after my 25th birthday when he came. Unfortunately for that poor girl he brought as a date, she couldn't compare to a glowing, singing angel, or a dancing-with-ribbons-Mary's-cousin! Devin fell in love with me on the spot...or at least became intensely interested in me. A few days later he called to tell me what a great job I had done - and ambiguously slid in another suggestion to do something together, since our double date hadn't come to pass. I agreed, wondering what the status of this "something" was...
